2.6.1 Historical Background
The beginning of COBOL is somewhat similar to that of ALGOL 60, in the
sense that the language was designed by a committee of people meeting for
relatively short periods of time. At the time, in 1959, the state of business
computing was similar to the state of scientific computing several years earlier,
when Fortran was being designed. One compiled language for business appli-
cations, FLOW-MATIC, had been implemented in 1957, but it belonged to
one manufacturer, UNIVAC, and was designed for that company’s computers.
Another language, AIMACO, was being used by the U.S. Air Force, but it was
only a minor variation of FLOW-MATIC. IBM had designed a programming
language for business applications, COMTRAN (COMmercial TRANslator),
but it had not yet been implemented. Several other language design projects
were being planned.2.6.2 FLOW-MATIC
The origins of FLOW-MATIC are worth at least a brief discussion, because
it was the primary progenitor of COBOL. In December 1953, Grace Hopper
at Remington-Rand UNIVAC wrote a proposal that was indeed prophetic.
It suggested that “mathematical programs should be written in mathematical
notation, data processing programs should be written in English statements”
(Wexelblat, 1981, p. 16). Unfortunately, in 1953, it was impossible to convince
nonprogrammers that a computer could be made to understand English words.
It was not until 1955 that a similar proposal had some hope of being funded
by UNIVAC management, and even then it took a prototype system to do the
final convincing. Part of this selling process involved compiling and running a
small program, first using English keywords, then using French keywords, and
then using German keywords. This demonstration was considered remarkable
by UNIVAC management and was instrumental in their acceptance of Hop-
per’s proposal.2.6.3 COBOL Design Process
The first formal meeting on the subject of a common language for business
applications, which was sponsored by the Department of Defense, was held
at the Pentagon on May 28 and 29, 1959 (exactly one year after the Zurich
ALGOL meeting). The consensus of the group was that the language, then
named CBL (Common Business Language), should have the following general
characteristics: Most agreed that it should use English as much as possible,
although a few argued for a more mathematical notation. The language must
be easy to use, even at the expense of being less powerful, in order to broaden
the base of those who could program computers. In addition to making the
language easy to use, it was believed that the use of English would allow man-
agers to read programs. Finally, the design should not be overly restricted by
the problems of its implementation.2.6 Computerizing Business Records: COBOL 59